Cats that disappear are usually close by I read somewhere—but something switched in them—switched off or on—and now you’re a predator they think—so you can call them but they won’t come out.  Other things are like that too.  
 
If you get a map of your neighborhood—or draw one yourself—and then make a circle X feet from your house—your cat is inside that circle they say—but you won’t find your cat I think because you have completely forgotten how to look among all the things like shrubs and shadows and stairways you’re used to not looking at really.  
 
I don’t have a cat.  I stole a map of the west because my father disappeared and I wanted to draw a circle to find him in but what’s the scale—what’s the conversion rate between cats and people—I don’t think anyone knows exactly.  
 
I ran my fingers down the spine of the Sierras—it was like dousing rods or a Ouija Board—I was waiting for some heat or magnetism—some pull from underneath.
 
My name is sometimes Olana.  I like to draw things and steal things and go into buildings slated for demolition.
 
Things on the map I stole are not where I used to think they were.
 
Things are like that a lot I’ve noticed lately.

 

***

 

Dust from the demolitions clouds the world—gathers in houses—on doorsteps—in the corners of rooms—advances on streets in sidewinding wisps.  It must be swept out and swept and swept out. Where will it go but into the air to settle again in a different place?  It must be swept out every morning and during the day and even at night before sleep and my thoughts about my father are just like that.
 
Other things in my life are like that too—regrets are like that too and I sweep them out with my words—out of the corners of my life where they stack up—where hours blow them into heaps—where thinking turns them in spirals like tornadoes that climb and widen. 
 
Dr. Winker says I have a melancholic miasma.  To me this sounds like some sorry valve in your heart that doesn’t work—or a vine-clogged swamp—nothing gets through is the point—like that time I put pretty much the whole lasagna a friend had made for me—when I was sick and staying at her place—down the garbage disposal in her kitchen sink—when she went out—because the mushrooms were like eating ears and the tomato sauce tasted like the metal can I used to keep your marbles in.

 

***

 

The last time I saw my father I barely saw him.  Now that morning seems sharp as shears but I know it wasn’t.  I was half-asleep.  I think I made my way to the kitchen.  I think my father was already starting to leave.  We may have hugged.  He said a thing or two that I don’t remember.never saw him again. 
 
It’s one thing when someone dies and you think of them and miss them.  Everyone knows it’s not the same when someone’s still alive and you don’t know where they are or why they left or what’s become of them—and do they think of you at all—and what are they doing right now while you’re thinking of them—and you’re thinking of them again and again.
 
I let my fingers walk down the Sierras—past Mono Lake—into Yosemite—into Death Valley—that’s the place all right—you’re dead before you even know you’re thirsty so I’ve heard.  What kind of name for a town is Needles anyway?

 

***

 

Do you think the dead can love more fiercely than the living—alive to loss as they are—being dead—alive to every foothold being fragile—the taken for granted hold you have on things—every taken for granted handhold in the world—like the way the living can fiercely love the dead but in reverse.  Nothing is taken for granted by the dead.  To love like that is what I’m thinking of. 
 
I saw a gray mirror once in an auction house—antique—free standing—full length—gray like a shell I’d found at Siren Beach—more luminous than reflective—more murky.  The mirrors of the dead look just like that I thought.  I mean the dead are to the living as that mirror is to mirrors—which means the dead don’t work the way the living do—they don’t work the way that mirror—gray and lustered and milky—doesn’t work as a mirror—which means you can’t see anything in it really—you can’t find yourself in it—you can’t find the room where you stand—everything blurred and indefinite—that’s the kind of reflection the mirror of the dead throws back because that’s what being dead is like—I’m sure.
 
I like to walk by the sea.  I like to pick up shells—driftwood and feathers—to put in the pockets of my coat with the things I’ve found in shops that I want for a second or two and take.
 
The ocean is a house the size of time—a house with no rooms—the way time has no rooms really—the way the self has no rooms beneath its welter of walls—down deep—where the mirrors of the dead cast light without limit—where gray waves thrust forward.  
 
You know the self is not a shore.  You know because people drown there nearly all the time.  You’ve seen this—maybe even in yourself.
 
I’m a romantic I guess—meaning I think there’s something behind all of this—that all of this stands for something—points to something—has music behind it—something like that—something shining through from behind—not that music shines—not really—but you know what I mean—when the wind is twisting your hair and you start to spin with your eyes closed by the sea with your arms held out—shining like that.

 

***

 

My father was thirty-nine when he disappeared.  I was thirteen.  This was years ago.  I don’t know how many.  The woman who sometimes says she is my mother says he died.  She doesn’t know anything.
 
Losing someone you love who’s still alive is like being locked out of your own house.  You are going from window to window and you are trying every door and at first you are disbelieving and then you are self-reproachful and then you are seething—so angry and displaced—and you want to start breaking windows and breaking down doors and throwing rocks and lighting fires and just burning the place to the ground.
 
I sit very quietly sometimes—very still—like someone stunned.  I sit very still—sometimes looking out to sea—sometimes on a bench in a park—sometimes I lie on my back and look at the stars.  The stars aren’t visible mostly but sometimes they are and I lie on my back and the size of the sky and the distances comfort me.  
 
The mirror of the dead is in my room—in a corner—you can’t believe how cheap a mirror is that doesn’t work.

 

***

 

I call the day my father left me Scissor Day.  Every Scissor Day I cut to pieces the thing that matters most to me.
 
So Scissor Day is a holiday in reverse—a reversal of the engine that drives the world—the engine of acquisition.  
 
I started with all the photos of my father.  I scissored them to bits and bits and smaller and smaller bits.
 
 You have two earrings and you lose one and you know that all you ever had was one and one and that two never was at all.  
 
You lose a person from your life and you know that two is not a unity of things but just things positioned side by side and positioning isn’t solid like a stone in your hand that you strike against a stone to make a spark it’s circumstantial and brief and two is just a separation in the making because there are only just ones and it’s like being locked out of your own house I told you but there’s nothing you can break to get inside—no doors—no windows—nothing you can break that makes a difference.  There’s only everything inside you—loose—flailing and battering like bridge cables uncoupled in hurricanes reaching out and coiling back and lashing the air and battering the very bridge they’ve once held up.  

 

***

 

The woman who comes to the house—the one I told you sometimes says she is my mother—I call her the holder because she holds me here—this roof over my head—scant food—a few coins now and then like what you’d spare a beggar on the street.
 
Have you ever closed your hand around a moth very slowly until its wings are tucked tight against it so tight that it cannot even move and did you notice how it does not any longer try to move how it doesn’t resist anymore it’s just being still in your closed hand?
 
I don’t remember who she actually is.  
 
She’s common as coats and keys—dull as a trowel—don’t even bother to talk about anything important—coats and keys and chairs and cars and light bulbs—stuff like that is all she’s got.  Anything else she blinks like waking in glare—anything else she turns away like smoke blown in your face.
 
She’s not who she says she is.  I know.  I’ve followed her.  She says she teaches school.  She doesn’t.  She wanders her life like a person with a metal detector at the beach.  
 
I think she lost a daughter and can’t accept it.  
 
Now she keeps me. 

 

***

 

I swept the dust from my room again today.  I swept it from the street in front of the house.  Blond ruins—weightless remnants of what once weighed on everyone—of all that required lifting and carrying and bearing forward—of all that had to be hefted in the transport toward the ever more gigantic.  Now there is only the minimal—this minimal—this minimal mixture of air and disintegrated greatness—the reminders and the reminded—the bristles of a broom against bare floor.
 
I’ve learned you should pay attention to things you’ve always loved.
 
Even as a child I used to go into the closet and cut buttons from the coats of guests and hide them in my room and later take them out and spread them out and how beautiful and magical and hard like a sheet of music they were when laid out in uneven lines.
 
I cut them with the double-edged razor from my father’s shaving kit—very carefully—and tried not to cut myself—holding only the dull side-edges—and never ever put the razor in my pocket and forget that it was there and reach in and then my pocket would be full of blood.
 
These things that persist—in your life—you have to pay attention to these things—these things that stay with you.  They don’t back off—you can’t scare them back—they aren’t like skittish creatures huddled on the margins of a clearing you’ve made in the woods to set up camp and set up chairs and build a fire or whatever people do out there with that camping stuff—poles and tarps and Bunsen burners and beakers and dried peas—it’s not science—this isn’t about hit or miss or mixing compounds or how does someone decide what goes with what to replicate a result that someone else had some luck with—this is about taking hold—being taken hold of.
 
 
© Lindsay Hill 2025
 
This is an excerpt from the novel Tidal Lock by Lindsay Hill, McPherson & Company 2025.